Community Housing Works helps residents save energy via Solara solar panels.

Solara, an award-winning construction project in the San Diego suburbs, demonstrates that greening the nation’s housing stock isn’t just a job for luxury homebuilders. Completed in March 2007, the affordable apartment complex includes solar panels on the roofs of the complex’s six buildings, on side roofs and on parking shade structures.  

A project of Community Housing Works, Solara joins a slew of affordable housing developments built in recent years that have been designed using green building techniques ranging from solar panels to graywater recycling systems to energy-saving windows. The 142-kilowatt solar arrays, along with energy efficiency measures mean residents have no energy costs. 

“Our carbon footprint has been reduced by about 95 percent compared to a similarly sized complex,” says Mary Jane Jagodzinski, senior project manager for Community HousingWorks, the Escondido-based nonprofit that developed Solara. If a nonprofit serving low-income folks can create sustainable properties, the developers say, for-profit builders have no excuse not to go green.

Community Housing Works is not seeking any green building certification for Solara, which was was the first project recognized under California's Zero Energy New Homes program.

Community Housing Works has completed more than 1,300 rental and cooperative apartments in 25 housing complexes, and have about 300 apartments in progress.